This is Buzz the Hornet reporting live from Monroe Elementary School, talking to these energetic second graders! As I walk quietly down the “B” wing, I see the seven second grade teachers, Mrs. Cooper, Mrs. DeBord, Mrs. Dirksen, Mrs. Marchetti, Mrs. Mitchell, Mrs. Owens, and Mrs. Shockley hard at work. I’ll quietly peek in each room to see what all of the excitement is about in these classrooms. Let’s see, Mrs. Marchetti is playing vocabulary BINGO with her 25 students to practice using these words in sentences. Mrs. Mitchell’s 25 students are doing an activity called “Making Words”. It seems that Mrs. Mitchell gives each student a set of letters and clues that the students use to spell mystery words. What a neat way to teach spelling and rhyming words! Across the hall in Mrs. Dirksen’s room, all 25 children are actively listening to her read aloud. She is reading a Magic Tree House book, by Mary Pope Osborne, and you could hear a pin drop! Next to Mrs. Dirksen is Mrs. Owens’ room. She is using a teaching strategy called “Jig-Saw” to help her 25 children understand story elements such as plot, characters, setting, retelling of the story, and vocabulary. Each child has an index card with a task and then the children return to their original groups to teach their peers what they’ve learned. Boy, I wish teachers made school this interesting when I was a youngster! I am now walking down the hall and admiring all of the student work displayed on the walls. I can tell these students take pride in their work. As I peer into Mrs. Cooper’s room, I see her providing interventions for counting money and making change to 5 children at a small table while the other 21 children are at math centers such as practicing math skills using the computers, practicing flash cards, playing subtraction board games, solving geometric shape puzzles, and playing a place value game. Everyone is quietly participating, and they seem to enjoy centers! My goodness, this second grade team of teachers is unbelievable! And there are two more teachers down the hall! Mrs. Shockley’s 24 students are working on the writing process and writing thank you letters. I can tell she has a talent for writing because I can see it rubbing off on her children. The last second grade teacher on my impressive journey through Monroe Elementary School’s “B” wing is Mrs. DeBord and her student teacher, Mrs. Angela Cook. It looks like her students are learning about germs and the food pyramid in Health. Each group of students is checking their potatoes for signs of germs. Wow! According to their chart over the last 2 weeks the potato that was rubbed around the girl’s restroom has the most germs growing on it! All 25 students are actively engaged and enthusiastic about the germ experiment!
How do these teachers do it? I wonder what these second graders say about their academic experience this year at Monroe Elementary. Let’s ask the students!
“I like math because my teacher makes us do it in a fun way. We do writing, science, social studies, spelling, and reading and my teacher makes it all fun. People say school is boring but I don’t think that!” – Reid
“I like having a class pet. Every Friday or break someone gets to take our guinea pig, Peanut, home. At guided reading/center time, if you are at the Research and Observation Center, you get to spend time with Peanut. Having a class pet has helped us learn responsibility and about science.” – Samantha
“My favorite part of our day is when the whole class reads together. The stories are fantasy and real. There are two kinds of books, the otter book and the fox book. The otter book is harder. The two books are big, but we haven’t read all of them yet. I like the harder stories in the otter book. That’s why I like whole group reading.” – Aaron
“I like reading with Mrs. Pieratt. She helps me read and we play reading games.” – Wesley
“I like writer’s workshop because I get to write stories and publish them on the computer and then put it in the hallway.” – Schyler
“Reader’s Theater is fun because we get to read cool poems to practice fluency and you get to pick your partner!” –Morgan
“My favorite thing I’ve learned in 2nd grade is Geometry. I like shapes. There are different kinds. I like it when we figure out how many sides, faces, and edges. The 2nd thing I like is addition. Addition is so easy, like 10+14=24.” – Dylan
“My favorite thing I’ve learned in 2nd grade is math. I also really like math tests and I really like “Mad Minutes.” Yep, math is my favorite subject in school. My second favorite thing I’ve learned in 2nd grade is writing. I especially like “Weekend Story Journals” and that’s my favorite things in 2nd grade.” – Jackson
“My favorite thing I learned in 2nd grade is science because I learned a lot more about animals and the Solar System. Science is so fun!” – Jake
“I have learned fluency in reading. The three things I learned in reading are right here: Accuracy, Reading Rate, and Expression.” – Kacey
“My favorite thing I learned in 2nd grade is math and writing cursive. I like cursive because it is neat writing. I like math because you need to regroup and count.” – Hannah
“My favorite thing is meeting new people. I learned how to write in cursive and how to count money and it was fun.” – Micayla
“My favorite thing to learn about is money because if you don’t learn how to count money, then you can not buy important stuff because you don’t know how to count money. So, that’s why you should go to school kids!” – Ellie
“My favorite thing that I have done in 2nd grade is math because I love doing plus and subtracting. I learned how to subtract.” – Julia
“My favorite thing in school is math. We learned cursive this year. Cursive is a great way to write.” – Hannah
“I enjoy taking math “mad minutes” because you get to go to higher levels and it gets harder and harder!” – Rachel
“I have enjoyed doing Sparkle. I love it when I win!” – Ben
“I enjoyed when we learned what is on a food pyramid.” – Taylor
“I think we’ve all had a good time learning all the stuff we have learned because we have a great teacher!” – Allison
“My favorite subject in 2nd grade is math, especially timed tests.” – Ryan
“I like math. I like symmetry.” – Rachel
“I like learning analogies.” – Ellie
“My favorite subject is spelling. I like reading too.” – Emily
“I like writing stories. We write in our journals almost every day.” – Colt
“I like writing in cursive because it’s fancy and I like fancy!” – Rachel
“My favorite things I have learned in second grade are Health, place value and reading fluency! I like all of it!” – Alayna
“I like doing the potato chart because by doing that you can see where most of the germs are. The girl’s bathroom has the most germs. We learned to wash our hands to keep germs away. That’s what I like doing the most out of the whole school year so far.” – Sarah
“What I like in second grade is geometry. When we made 3-D shapes with the marshmallows and toothpicks it was cool! I learned what vertices, edges and faces are. I like math because it helps me get better.” – Nico
“I learned how to write in cursive. I enjoyed when we were writing cursive because we were having a lot of fun. I enjoyed geometry because I like learning about solids.” – Logan
“My teacher is incredible. She taught me stuff like vertices, carrying, and borrowing with big numbers. We do expanded notation, times, and Algebra problems every morning in math. Math might be my favorite subject because of her. She's the best teacher in the whole world.” – Annistine
“One of my favorite things in class is when we read to the class. I'm a great reader and Mrs. Shockley lets me have fun and laugh and make the other kids laugh too.” – Jacob
Well, there you have it straight from these super second graders. This is Buzz Hornet signing off…Until next time Monroe!
